CLOSE
Opinion

by -
0 68
Pixabay photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

Panic, which started in my stomach and had seeped so deep into the sinews of my fingers that I could barely write my own name, was overcoming me.

I was staring at the problem, knowing that I could do it if I calmed down, but also fearing that the answer wouldn’t come in time.

I had studied this type of organic chemistry problem for weeks, had attended every extra help session Randy, my teaching assistant and the head teaching fellow for the class, gave, including several late in the evening on Sunday nights.

If I froze up for too long, I ran the risk of not finishing that problem or the test. I couldn’t come up with a solution, and I couldn’t move on.

Then, it hit me. No, it wasn’t the solution. It was Randy’s overwhelming cologne. My teaching fellow was walking up and down the rows of the testing site, making sure no one was cheating, while responding to requests to go to the bathroom.

Something about his cologne brought me back to one of the many study sessions, helping me break the mental logjam in my head and sending me toward the solution that was right under my nose.

As we enter the 11th month of this pandemic, we can see and hear many of the cues we would get if we were continuing to live the lives we took for granted, but we are much more limited in what we can smell, especially if we are sticking with federal guidelines and staying put.

So, what smells do I miss the most?

While I enjoy visiting Long Island beaches in the summer, when the trio of hazy, hot and humid hovers in the air, I particularly appreciate the cold, salt spray of a winter beach, when the scent of crispy and frozen seaweed blends with air that seems to have brought hints of its cold journey across the ocean.

Then, of course, there is the missing smell of the kinds of foods that aren’t in our own kitchens or right next door. One of my favorite restaurants, the Good Steer sends out the scent of their onion rings in every direction around the building, calling to me and recalling my youth when my late father would watch happily as all three of his sons consumed our double order of onion rings, alongside our burger supremes.

While all ice might seem to smell the same, the scent of Alaska’s glaciers brings a frozen crispness to an inhospitable climate. Marveling at the ice around a cruise my wife and I took over two decades ago, I inhaled the cool fresh scent of frozen water.

Then there’s the food from all over the world. The enticing smells of freshly baked baguettes and fruity macarons in Parisian patisseries, the welcoming scent of fish caught earlier that day on Hawaiian beaches or the symphony of smells from places like Faneuil Hall, where Boston accents form the acoustic backdrop for the smell of flowers, steaks, and baked beans.

With spring just a month away, I turn to thoughts of baseball and Yankee Stadium. Yes, of course, numerous odors throughout the stadium — from other fans who could use some of Randy’s cologne to restrooms that don’t smell like a rose garden — aren’t the first things that come to mind. I’m talking about the smell of the grass and the dirt after the grounds crew waters it. That baseball field scent conjures infinite possibilities, from triple plays to triples off the wall, from immaculate innings to grass-stained catches. The smell of hot dogs and soft buns entice us as vendors march up and down the stairs nearby.

These days, we can see and hear people through FaceTime calls, but we can’t smell them. That person might love orange Tic Tacs, tuna fish sandwiches, fresh roasted coffee or any of a host of other scents — cinnamon rolls, perhaps —that define her the same way the light highlights a crooked-toothed smile. We might find Tic Tacs that remind us of them, but, without the combination of scents, including their laundry detergent, their soap or their conditioner, or their physical presence, we are missing that olfactory connection.

by -
0 60
Photo by Pixabay

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

Last Saturday I received my first of the required two vaccines against COVID-19. The inoculation itself was painless. The person who administered the shot was a broad-shouldered young man with curly black hair, deep brown eyes and prominent cheekbones that led to a white-tooth smile. He pinched the skin of my arm just below my left shoulder, and I knew the deed was done only when he discarded the needle into the red can. I think you can see why the entire experience was painless.

As you, who have tried undoubtedly know, it was not easy to get an appointment for the vaccine. My family and friends and the children of my friends were all on the phone or on their computer keyboards for hours trying over and over again to make contact with the right person in a reasonably close location to schedule the vaccination. Finally, the daughter of a close friend secured a time slot for me at the Javitz Center in New York City, and then my son found one sooner at Jones Beach.

I know that some people are passing up the opportunity to get vaccinated. They are concerned, among other reasons, that it has not been tested sufficiently since it was developed with unprecedented speed. What will the long term effects of the vaccine be? No one knows because there has not been a long term so far; we do know that the immediate effects have been studied for the short term in thousands of patients in clinical trials. The results and the efficacy have been excellent. So I decided that I would risk any unknown long term negative effects from the vaccine against the already known long-haul negative consequences from the disease and go for it.

I had heard that after-effects were not uncommon during the 24 hours following the vaccination, and indeed I did experience a couple. Two or three hours after I returned home, and after my dinner, I suddenly was enormously fatigued. I managed to climb the stairs to the bedroom, despite feeling light-head, and I slid into bed, where I then spent the night and enjoyed a sound sleep. I awoke to an aching arm, but that wasn’t the main problem. When I tried to walk, my right leg was, I thought, in spasm. I assumed I had slept in an awkward position and that I could walk it off, but the pain intensified. As the day went by, I endured only with the help of repeated Tylenol capsules, vitamins, a banana and ultimately the distraction of the big football game.

The next day, little more than 24 hours later, I felt perfectly fine. I was timid about walking, but there was no problem. Do I know that the leg pain was the after effect of the shot? I don’t, of course. 

I do have a date for the second shot, which is scheduled for early next month, and apparently there is a dose reserved for me to receive at that time. Will the vaccine protect me? From what I have read and been told, it takes about two weeks before the body develops any immunity, and with the one shot, that is perhaps only 50 or 60 percent. The second vaccination brings the immune system to about 94 percent — or so the evidence has shown. Now, with the new mutations that are freely developed by the viruses with each reproduction in new victims, the scientists are not sure. Vaccinations are racing against viral reproduction.

There can be many minute mutations of the viruses’ genetic sequences. More worrisome is recombination. That means the coronavirus mixes large chunks of its genome upon reproduction, and that is common and surely happening. Recombination might enable different tiny variants to combine and make the virus more potent inside a victim’s body.

The question is, will the vaccine hold these newly minted intruders off? Scientists are studying variants and recombination, but they don’t yet know. So far, so good.

by -
0 105
A truck from the Town of Huntington plows the street on Feb. 1.

The first day of February reminded us that winter is still here, and a foot or more of snow can fall from the sky at any time wreaking havoc on our everyday lives. Heavy snowfalls may be welcomed by skiers and children, but for everyone else the snow can be a nuisance and even a danger.

On Monday, as with previous storms, weather forecasters and elected officials reminded residents to stay off roads if they didn’t need to go out. In the past, despite those warnings, many found themselves still having to go to work. Nowadays, after trying to navigate business during a pandemic for months, companies have learned that a good deal of work can be done from home.

For nearly a year, employers and employees all over the country have embraced the use of email, Google, Zoom, messaging platforms such as Slack and more. Some in New York had no choice in the beginning as many businesses in the state that were deemed nonessential were required to close down. Others have chosen, even after the shutdowns were lifted, to continue having employees work from home to help stop the spread of the coronavirus.

The use of modern technology has kept the work flowing and employees connected. Many have found that their workers are more efficient as there are fewer distractions at home, and without having to deal with their commutes, many are willing to take the time they would have been in the car, bus or train and use it to do more work.

Working from home can be a game changer not only during long-term shutdowns or for taking care to keep employees healthy, but it can also be used when driving just isn’t wise, especially for workers who have strict deadlines to meet. Imagine, now employees on a snowy day are less stressed because they don’t have to worry about hazardous roads.

During a pandemic, the work-from-home option has helped to keep employees healthy, and on the day of a storm, it helps keep them safe. In turn, the fewer people on the road, the fewer calls police officers receive, which in turn keeps them safe, too. Because, it doesn’t matter what type of car a person has, whether big or small, if snow is blowing across the roads and visibility is compromised, it’s not wise to be on the road

Law enforcement and health care workers need to be out on the roads to get to their jobs to keep the public safe and healthy, the rest of our jobs aren’t as essential.

Let’s take what we’ve learned in 2020 and apply it in the future to keep residents safe. If there is one lesson that we can take with us from the pandemic, it’s that things can be done differently and still produce the same results.

Will there be more snow this winter? We don’t know, but what we do know we’re ready for it. Bring it on!

by -
0 167
Photo from Pixabay

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

For the past week, I’ve had birds on my brain.

For starters, Central Park birders headed to the famous urban greenway recently to catch sight of a snowy owl, the first time people documented the presence of the bird in the park in about 130 years. 

I wrote to a bird expert, Noah Strycker, who is both a celebrated avian author, having written “Birding without Borders,” and a master’s candidate at Stony Brook University in the laboratory of Heather Lynch, a penguin scientist and the IACS Endowed Chair for Ecology & Evolution.

Strycker responded to numerous questions about the owl and the snowstorm that blanketed the region earlier this week.

In response to a question about exactly what might bring a snowy owl to the city, Strycker suggested that these birds often “irrupt,” a word for traveling greater distances than normal, south from their normal Arctic range in winters following good breeding summers. 

“Their appearance in New York may be related to an abundance of lemmings in the Arctic last summer,” Strycker wrote. In other words, these well-fed birds may have been able to journey further from the Arctic after a bountiful summer.

While Strycker didn’t catch sight of the owl this time, he did see one on Long Island last winter. They appear on the south shore almost every year, although it’s unusual to see one in Central Park because they prefer beaches and open areas, which are closer to a normal tundra habitat.

As for the rare birds Strycker has seen in the area, he said he got to see a Western Tanager and an Ash Throated Flycatcher in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn this fall. These are birds from the western part of the country, which don’t visit the Empire State too often.

Vagrant birds, which occur in areas outside their typical range, can appear in the area, a byproduct of a wrong turn during a long migration. So, what happens to birds during a snowstorm, I wondered.

For the snowy owl, if he were still here, the precipitation probably wouldn’t have been much of a problem, as his name suggests.

“Flying through falling snowflakes isn’t as much of an issue as flying in high winds, which do, occasionally, literally blow birds off course,” Strycker wrote.

During the storm, many bird species will tuck themselves in a protected spot, like in a dense tree to ride out the flakes.

Noah Strycker with a northern saw-whet owl

“This is a good time to watch your hedges and evergreen trees, which provide nice cover in the winter,” Strycker suggested.

Strycker said people could do seed eating birds — like sparrows, finches, cardinals, doves, chickadees, and jays — a favor by restocking a feeder before a snowstorm.

“They will all come to bird feeders for sunflower seeds and suet,” he said.

Snowy owls, on the other hand, don’t need handouts or feeders. They find their food, typically small mammals, by using their keen senses of sight and hearing. Shaped like a disc, an owl’s face concentrates faint sounds of rustling under the snow, allowing it to find prey it can’t see.

Strycker has always wanted to find an owl footprint in the snow, which looks like a snow angel. The owl lands on the snowy landscape to find its prey and lifts off, leaving footprint evidence of its meal.

As for the effect of the snow on a bird’s survival, Strycker said most of the birds in the area manage through the colder months.

“Snowstorms have been occurring in New York for a very long time, so birds that spend the winter here have mostly adapted to surviving them,” Strycker wrote.

by -
0 70
Photo from Pixabay

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

When General Motors announced last week that the company would aim to sell only electric cars and trucks by 2035, it shook up the industry. There are already electric cars on the road, although they number fewer than one percent.

Tesla, the electric car maker, has been much in the news lately since Wall Street values the company at more than ten times that of General Motors, and indeed, more than Toyota, Volkswagen, Ford and General Motors combined. 

Nonetheless, this was a sharp turn for G.M. And as the largest automaker in the United States and the fourth largest in the world, what G.M. does affects everyone else down the automotive line.

It is no coincidence that the announcement came only a day after President Biden signed an executive order directing his administration to fight the problem of climate change. The Environmental Protection Agency is developing tough new tailpipe pollution regulations to control the largest source of planet-warming emissions in the short term. G.M. is aligning itself with the new administration’s goal in its drive to electric power. Furthermore, just three months ago, China ordered that most vehicles sold there must be electric by 2035. China is G.M.’s and the world’s largest market.

So all roads would seem to be pointing to a preponderance of electric cars by 2035, at least as of the present. But there remains a significant hurdle in the production of electric cars. While countries can certainly create charging stations along the roads in the same fashion as we now have gas stations, and President Biden has asked for 500,000 public charger stations to be built by 2030, the challenge is the batteries required by the cars. 

The battery packs have to be big, and right now to be big means to be expensive. Gasoline engines for equivalent cars cost less than half as much. China is the leading producer of these batteries, and of electric motors, which is not surprising since Chinese leadership has long viewed its dependence on oil imports as a considerable vulnerability. 

Therefore, major auto companies, like Daimler and Toyota, are already manufacturing their electric cars in China. So will many of the Ford Mustang Mach-E models be made there. Tesla started making cars in Shanghai over a year ago to sell in China.

So, folks, it would seem that in our not-too-distant future, we are destined to own electric cars. G.M. is planning to spend $27 billion to introduce 30 electric models by 2025, just a short generation away for those buying new cars this year. They are building a plant in Ohio to make batteries for those vehicles and to develop better batteries. G.M. now feels it could make electric vehicles that would cost no more than gasoline ones. And when G.M. in October offered its Hummer electric pick-up truck, enough orders had come in within a day to fill the entire year’s planned production. 

The Chinese have cleverly offered their huge consumer market in exchange for technical information. Through joint ventures with companies of other nations, along with their own considerable research, they have become the leader in battery development. Further rounding out the picture for the urgency of electric vehicles is the ban by Britain, Ireland and the Netherlands on new gasoline and diesel cars as of 2030.

Utility companies will have to improve their output by as much as 25 percent, which they can do at considerable expense. Guess who will be paying the tab! But the increased rates should be offset by the savings in gasoline, at least that would be the plan.

Power plants would also have to engage in some sort of rotation so that not everyone can charge their vehicles at the same time. They would also help the global climate change situation by using more solar and wind instead of coal and natural gas, in short by cleaning up the power grid.

by -
0 65
Photo from Deposit Photos

You would think a global pandemic that has lasted nearly a year would have gotten New York more organized, right? 

In the beginning, none of us had any idea what was going on with COVID-19. Every day was a new battle, and we had to evolve everything in our lives constantly. 

That was OK. It was fair. The virus was new and we, as Americans, never experienced anything like this before. There was a learning curve. 

Back in March, April and even into June, it was a little more understandable knowing that getting tested for the coronavirus was hard. We didn’t have enough testing, supplies or even gloves for the nurses and doctors to wear as they administered the swab. 

Fine. But why is it almost February 2021 and we still have practically no organizational skills? 

Why is it that New Yorkers are told one thing about testing and now vaccines, but when they try to take advantage of it, they’re denied? 

We have co-workers, family members and friends who should be getting their vaccines. They’re in the most at-risk age group, they’re workers in a medical office but aren’t first responders, they’re out in the public, working as cashiers at grocery stores and big-box retailers taking money from people they don’t know. 

Why can’t they get the vaccine yet? 

Reports say that there isn’t enough available yet — and supplies, once again, are low. 

We understand that. We understand that there are more than 7 million people on Long Island alone. 

But what we don’t understand is why there’s little transparency, and contradicting reports. Why can some people get it and others cannot? 

We have heard stories of some elderly people who cannot get an appointment at all, and no one is there to help them. We hear other stories that people waited in line for nearly five hours. Other stories say that they drove up to the site and were finished in 10 minutes.

We just want answers. We want a plan. We want a serious plan that will give us a play-by-play on what to do, what to expect and a timeline. 

Curveballs will happen. We saw that a lot in 2020. 

But clearly the federal, state and local governments did not have “to stay organized with anything related to COVID” on their New Year’s resolutions list. 

This is not the time to go with the flow. Lives are at stake. 

by -
0 120
William Shakespeare statue in Verona, Italy. Photo from DepositPhotos

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

Many years ago, Madonna, and the rest of us, were “Living in a Material World.”

Well, it seems to me that we are now living in an allegorical world.

You see, we’re on a boat that’s in rough seas. We are in the middle of a Corona storm, with howling winds that threaten to rip the sails off the masts.

At the same time, the boat has numerous leaks, while the waves from the right and from the left crash into the ship.

The modern day Montagues are blaming the waves from the left for causing the danger to our ship. Without those waves, we would be able to head off in a glorious direction toward a better sunset.

At the same time, the Capulets are shouting at the waves on the right, suggesting that they have interrupted the magnificent journey, making the ship spin and rock out of control.

Never a dull moment on that ship of ours, the former captain of the ship, who reluctantly removed his steely grip from the wheel, is facing an imminent investigation from a team comprised mostly of the Capulets, who have recruited a few members of the Montagues to engage in an extensive trial.

The majority of the Montagues have a Greek chorus that laments the terrible state of affairs and encourages the new captain, whom they don’t particularly like or trust, to make sure their way of life continues and their voices continue to be important in the search for Truth, Justice and the American Way.

At the same time, the Capulets have lined up a group of people who are just as earnest and eager in their beliefs, urging the captain to ensure the future safety of the ship and all its inhabitants.

Passing people buffeted about in life rafts, some Montagues urge the captain to move on and to focus resources and efforts on the people aboard the ship. Some Capulets, on the other hand, believe the people who built the ship in the first place were, at one time or another, adrift in life rafts themselves and would like to provide refuge and safety to these wayward travelers.

All the while, the Corona winds, which started our violently, calmed down quite a bit during the summer, and have increased in intensity following Thanksgiving and the December holidays, have increased in their intensity, tearing holes in the sails and threatening to pull at the seams of the stars and stripes.

Somewhere in the middle of the ship, people who don’t define themselves as either ardent Montagues or Capulets are tending to the wounded, preparing food for others, ensuring law and order, and making the kind of shields that deflect the wind, protecting individuals and the group.

The howling wind has made it difficult for the Capulets and the Montagues to hear each other, but that hasn’t stopped either of them from pointing fingers or from blaming the other side for the condition of the waterlogged ship.

People on this American vessel have heard that ships from other nations have made it out of the storm and are enjoying calmer seas, with warm sunshine and gentle breezes.

Some day, hopefully before too long, people on both sides will figure out a way to work together, to patch the holes in the sails, to help each other and to help take the ship to calmer waters.

The Corona storm isn’t passing on its own and the residents of the ship need to pull in the same direction to maneuver to the familiar, calmer seas, where residents of the ship can, once again, enjoy peace, good health and prosperity.

by -
0 78
Photo from Pixabay

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

As they say in literature, it is the best of times and the worst of times. You could almost say it is also a tale of two cities. Yes, the vaccine has now been developed and produced to counter the novel coronavirus. We will require two shots, whether we get the Moderna or the Pfizer-BioNTech brand, and there may even be a third possibility, one from Johnson & Johnson, that will only be a one shot deal. That’s the wonderful news.

Less than wonderful is the distribution thus far. Despite best intentions, it has been spotty and disorganized. Locations that are supposed to be vaccination sites have had to turn people away because they have run out of the vaccine or never received the shipment to begin with. Getting an appointment, as opposed to standing optimistically for hours in a line, has become an exercise of pounding the keyboard of the computer or dialing on the phone for hours on end, looking for a slot with availability. 

Just about everyone I know is being helped by their children and grandchildren in this frustrating pursuit of inoculation. Those who have received the shot are living in a different city from those who have not.

To complicate the already complicated situation, the wily virus is doing what viruses do: mutating ahead of the vaccines. So far, the pharmaceutical companies are saying that their products are effective against the new strains, perhaps a little less so against the variant from South Africa than the one from the United Kingdom. 

Brazil has a variant as well. And while non-American citizens originating in those countries are, for the moment, banned from entering the United States, scientists know those mutations are already here, having arrived before the ban, from Britain and Brazil so far and most probably South Africa as well. 

Worse than potentially evading the vaccines is the increased degree of contagion those viruses already possess. The knowledge that scientists are already hard at work catching up to the newer strains is comforting. Such an adjustment could take six weeks, however, according to Moderna. Or perhaps a third shot of the existing vaccine might work against the variant.

So while the vaccine may be the best of times, we still have to get there, and the worst is now upon us. Sooner or later, we hope sooner, we will get the logistics of distribution worked out, but most of us will not reach that point of inoculation until mid-summer or fall at the earliest. Meanwhile more people will become ill, especially in the poorer nations unable to buy vaccines in large quantities. And with our global interactions, what pathogens exist elsewhere in the world will also come here with their new mutations.

So what can we do to help ourselves through these next few months?

Let’s remember that a simple handful of actions we already have taken can keep the viruses at bay. Washing our hands thoroughly, multiple times a day ( I practically bathe in hand lotion after all those washings); maintaining social distancing of at least 6 feet, preferably 15 feet, inside as well as outside; and wearing masks are effective defenses, if only we follow them. Working remotely and limiting travel have further contributed to containment.

On the subject of wearing masks, and at the risk of boring you with repetition because I wrote about this last week, I want to urge you to consider wearing two masks. Since the new strains are more contagious, meaning they can spread more readily, having a double barrier for them to pass through doubles our chances of escaping the disease. 

The growing recommendation is to wear a surgical mask underneath and a cloth mask on top. I have tried it and find this no more uncomfortable than a single mask, and I am happier with the thought of being better protected. I throw away the surgical mask and wash the cloth one often to preserve its effectiveness, making for myself a sort of double-bagged wall.

by -
0 112
President Franklin D. Roosevelt

It was during Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first inauguration address in 1933 when he uttered the famous sentence, “So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

It was a call to Americans to work together to fight against dark times.

Our country has known collective terror throughout the decades, and 2020 will be remembered as the year we feared an invisible virus and people taking advantage of peaceful protests by looting stores and burning cars. That trepidation carried over into the new year as citizens watched as extremists sieged the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

Nearly 90 years after Roosevelt called for Americans to fight fear, we find ourselves afraid of our fellow citizens. Since the attack on the People’s House in Washington, D.C., members of Congress are worried that their safety, as well as that of their family members, is in jeopardy. Some even believe their own colleagues will harm them if they speak out against former President Donald Trump (R). Rep. Peter Meijer (R-MI-03), a freshman congressman, told CNN he was afraid of possible threats after he voted to impeach Trump.

The fear has trickled down to our own neighborhoods as many are hesitant to speak their opinions, afraid if their views are more conservative than others they will be tied to the extremists who assaulted the Capitol.

There are those who once wouldn’t think twice about standing on a corner to protest or rally, even if people who held opposing views were right across the street. Now many are hesitant that their words might be met with foul language, assault and worse.

Many this past summer, during protests, witnessed foul language being exchanged between protesters and anti-protesters. Black Lives Matters participants in a rally in Smithtown in June took to social media alleging that they were assaulted. In September, a Massapequa man was arrested for allegedly assaulting a 64-year-old man who was rallying with the North Country Patriots, a conservative group that meets on the corner of Bennetts Road and Route 25A every Saturday morning.

Our times have become so divisive that many have forgotten the adversities Americans have gone through together — the Great Depression, the world wars, 9/11 and more. These horrific events didn’t leave us weaker, they left us stronger.

We became stronger because we live in a country where we have the right to pursue happiness, the right to gather, the right to express our opinions and so much more. And while we may not have the right to use those words and actions to cause harm to others or property, we have those rights.

Most of our fellow Americans get that. So let’s move forward together, stronger and more fearlessly than before with knowledge and empathy, embracing our freedoms and respecting that others in this country enjoy the same rights.

by -
0 79
Pexel photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

What do we do when we meet someone new in 2021 IRL, or, to the 12 uninitiated readers, “in real life?”

Well, for starters, we can’t and shouldn’t shake hands. That ritual is probably long gone. Maybe the Japanese were right with bowing. If handshakes are out, hugs, even for those we might have been speaking to for months during the isolated pandemic, are absolutely forbidden.

If we can’t hug grandma, grandpa and other relatives we’ve known most or all of our lives, we certainly can’t hug, even casually, someone new.

Ideally, we’d stand somewhere between six and 60 feet away from them, especially if we’re inside. That could be problematic for people who can’t hear all that well and who don’t have the benefit of reading anyone’s lips anymore. 

In fact, I’m thinking of going into the business of selling those Mission Impossible voice changers. If you’ve seen the movies, you know that the Tom Cruise teams can change their voices to sound like everyone else. Most of us who have heard our own voices on voicemail would like a few moments to sound more like James Earl Jones or Scarlett Johansson. Maybe we like our own voice, but we’d prefer to have a British, Australian or New Zealand accent. We could change our accents, the way we change the navigational voice on Siri and ask people if they know where we’re pretending we were raised.

Now, what we discuss is a bit tricky in the hypersensitive, polarized world of 2021. Someone who’s walking a dog most likely would be happy to talk about their four-footed companion. 

I’ve been surprised by the type of questions and information people seek when they talk about my dog. People have asked not only how old he is, but also how much he weighs, as if dogs around his size are in some kind of modeling contest. Fortunately, my dog doesn’t seem particularly concerned about his weight, as he demonstrates regularly with a feverish appetite for everything from broccoli to french fries to cat vomit. Yes, he eats cat vomit, which means that if I cook something he won’t eat, he thinks it tastes worse than cat vomit, a notion that delights my teenage children.

Now, if you’re thinking about politics, you probably should keep that to yourself. Unless someone is wearing a MAGA hat or has some version of Dump Trump on a T-shirt, it’s tough to know where they stand on the plate tectonic sized political divide.

We can talk about sports, but we run the risk of someone telling us how irrelevant sports is in the modern world during a pandemic or how they wish they could return to the age when sports mattered.

Children seem like fair game, although we have to watch out for many age-related minefields. 

My son, for example, is a senior in high school. Some parents are happy to tell you all the colleges that accepted and rejected their children, while others are content to share what city or even what coast intrigues their progeny, as in, “yes, my son has only applied to schools on the East Coast or in states with fewer than seven letters” (there are nine states in that category, by the way).

So, where does that leave us in the strange world where we’re all putting on masks before we go into a bank (imagine taking a time machine from 1999 and seeing those entering a bank without masks getting into trouble?) Well, the weather is often safe, as are dogs, the disruption the pandemic caused and, generally speaking, children.

Prev1...575859...146Next Page 58 of 146
TBR News Media is your local news and entertainment website.
We provide you with the latest breaking news and information for your community.
Contact us: [email protected]

Most Viewed

©